SALES AUDIT


ABRR has over 28 years’ experience in sales, sales training, train the trainer and sales procedure and implementation. We can help analyse where you can improve or create a better sales process to reduce unnecessary paperwork, procedures and processes that may in fact be causing you to lose sales.

assess

Below are some of the areas we cover 

The Sales Team  

  • Does each rep have a reasonable number of clients – not too few that they’re bored and not too many that they can’t cover them all?
  • Are your reps “hunters” (targeting new clients) or “farmers” (maintaining/growing repeat clients)? Or both? And both are important.
  • Do your reps have assigned ‘territories’… as defined by geography, size of clients or vertical markets served? Having clearly defined parameters eliminates any conflicts and ensures the appropriate focus.

Capabilities Presentation

  • Look at your current presentation and cut out 50% of the words. Then take out another 50%. Your goal is to create a visually compelling presentation… not a bunch of words that you read to the audience. “Sell the sizzle, not the steak.”
  • Talk about how you help clients, not just what you sell.
  • Have a longer version (for in-person) and a shorter one (for virtual presentations).
  • Practice… practice… practice…
  • To make sure your sales rep is representing your firm that way that you want, have him/her present to you like their job depended on it – because it should!

Sales Rep Preparation  salesforce

  • Training: about the industry, your company, your competitors and your products
  • On-going development: selling skills, industry updates, etc.
  • Tools: CRM system, laptop, smart phone, virtual presentation software (like WebEx, Skype, Go To Meeting, etc.)
  • Subscriptions: make sure to fund industry magazine subscriptions… you want your reps to become ‘students of the industry.’

Sales Compensation

  • Know this… there are no perfect comp plans, but work on one that serves both the company’s and the rep’s needs.
  • Sales reps like instant gratification… so pay out monthly if you can.
  • A good comp plan will drive behaviour – so make sure the plan is aligned with your goals.
  • Make sure you create a plan that you can actually implement… that you can easily get the data you need from accounting, etc.

Other sales reps

  • Make sure your PMs/PDs are trained to up-sell and cross-sell.
  • When appropriate, have the outside reps take a senior executive along on sales calls – there is strength in numbers and in that level of seniority.
  • Have the sales rep take along other team members – PDs, marketers, analysts, moderators… not only does it help those team members to better understand what sales does, but also to better understand clients’ needs.

Elevator pitch

  • There are four distinct parts to a pitch:
  1. Who you are (name and company)
  2. What you do (e.g. full-service research firm)
  3. Who do you do it for (your target market(s))
  4. What’s different about it / Why they should care / How they will benefit
  • Write it from their perspective; e.g. don’t talk about the methodologies you use… talk about the kind of business problems (their business problems) you solve

Planning  finger

  • Do you have a marketing & sales plan in place? Is it based on strategy? At the very least, do you have a calendar of events that you can stick to?
  • Can you articulate HOW you are different than your competitors (“We do good work. / We have great people. / We really take care of our clients.” does not count – everybody says that!)? Once you can articulate a difference, it should become the centre piece of your marketing message.

Measurement

  • Are you measuring your marketing and sales? If not, how do you know if it’s working?!
  • For marketing:
    • When all else fails, ask everyone, “How’d you hear about us?” then track the results.
    • Are you doing simple A/B testing of emails, ads, etc? It’s an easy way to get better at marketing every day.
    • If it’s not in place yet, set your business up on Google Analytics today to measure activities related to your website!
  • For sales:
    • Revenue (of course): vs. goals, vs. last year, overall and by client.
    • Activity: # calls, # presentations, # new prospects, etc.; if Revenue is off and you’re not tracking Activity, you won’t know what to fix.
    • Pipeline progress: Suspects / Prospects / 1st-time Clients / Repeat Clients (or however you define it)… is the total number of firms in the pipeline growing and are they moving closer to the smaller end?

Execution  action

  • Develop a simple, daily marketing & sales calendar
  • Develop a simply dashboard for measuring your marketing & sales
  • Develop a basic budget tracking sheet to make sure you’re staying on plan
  • Most importantly, block off a little time each day to focus on marketing & sales.

Remember, every so often, take the time to step back and take a good, hard, objective look at your marketing & sales efforts… as though you were doing it through the eyes of your clients. Then react to what you see, tweak what you’re doing and your results can only improve.

 

CALL 1300 79 29 62 NOW FOR YOUR FREE CONSULTATION to find out how ABRR can help you and your business or complete our contact form on the right and one of our trained advisors will call you.